3
Aug
So apparently the key to winning $100 is to lose your damn mind. Neil fucking goes off, and I wander over to his blog yesterday only to discover he’s got some bullshit like 5500 views. What?!? And LISA is even posting over there. What gives? Oh, wait, no I get it. Lisa wants Neil to win that money so he can buy her shit, so she’s got allll her colleagues and fellow students reading it now. God DAMMIT. Well, obviously the kid gloves are off and the boxing gloves are on. So let’s do this.
Erik tells me Neil has a few of her more… personal effects. BOOM. How’s that? You like that? Sick burn.
29
Jul
So, I gotta be honest, the jam was worth the crap I had to go through to get it. That said, you guys out there don’t even know the half of it. But that’s a story for another day.
So Tempo once again drops some knowledge, and I feel it is my duty as a man of the Lounge to respond.
Dating ain’t easy. Well, pimping ain’t easy, but dating isn’t either. Here’s my issue with the whole mess: it’s a catch-22.
On the one hand, you could be completely honest about everything you feel. It’s a fairly healthy way to go, but in the end, the truth hurts, and you’re bound to say something true when a little white lie would have been far better. Then it’s the “Is that what you really think?” and it’s all downhill from there.
Meanwhile, you could just as easily lie your ass off. But why the hell would you want to do that? I mean, Christ, I can lie to people on the street for all I care. ”Hey, I’m a doctor. I make six figures. I have a yacht.” I mean, really, why bother at that point?
Of course, we’re avoiding the main issue and that’s that 99% of the succubi in this world are leeches that will slowly suck your soul out as soon as your… well, you get my drift.
Courtesy is fine. Chivalry is bullshit. I walk through a door, and give it a push in case someone’s behind me. But I’m not gonna stop and wait for your lazy ass to get here, I’ve got places to be and things to do. Chivalry is for the desperate and the “white knights”. You know these guys. Defend a girl to the death for no reason other than poon-envy. It was the norm back then, that’s how things worked. Nowadays, women want to be treated like men, like equals, yadda yadda. Well that’s fine by me, but that means you gotta pull out your own chair, hold your own door open, and learn to drive.
Now, I’m no caveman, I’m not suggesting anyone go out of their way to obstruct women’s progress or whatever. But equal is equal. And the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. We’ve got weeds of our own to deal with.
Fucking hell, we’re out of jam. Why does no one write this stuff down? You finish something, you write it on the list. Or hell, they could even just go pick up a new jar.
Aargh, dammit. Neil’s at work, and who knows where Erik is right now. This is ridiculous. Whatever, at least we had an uneventful weekend for a change. Maybe I can start sleeping in again.
23
Jul
Reality TV. What a joke. An oxymoron at best, a travesty at worst. Tempo was asking about my thoughts on reality TV, so sit down, folks, and I’ll enlighten you.
Let’s take a trip to the past, shall we? It’s 1988, and the Writers Guild of America is fed up. They go on strike, leaving networks scrambling for a new brand of televised media. In comes a humble pair, John Langley and Malcolm Barbour with a pitch for a new show idea: take a cameraman, and follow police officers on their busts. A great, new look into law enforcement and (what’s more) no scriptwriting involved! This show would go on to become one of the longest-running shows in television: COPS. Twenty years, and it’s still on the air.
Now here’s the thing. COPS was in no way the first reality TV show. And by modern standards it wasn’t a “reality TV show” at all. Why? It’s not a game. Which is bullshit, but we’ll get to that. COPS was the first truly unscripted television show. It dealt with real men and women in law enforcement, doing their jobs. This was a theme that has held since then, and has been expanded into other professions on the shows Swamp Loggers, Ice Truckers, and my personal favorite, Deadliest Catch. These guys already have the job with the highest mortality rate next to U.S. presidents (300 out of 100,000 die each year — two and a half times as many as pilots), and now they take cameramen (who are most certainly not trained in crab fishing) and put them on a floating iron deathtrap in the middle of a freezing ocean. Hell, they got footage of shipwrecks and dead fishermen, it’s pretty unreal.
Why? Because it is real. The genre for shows like this is labeled as “documentaries”. Bullshit. Documentaries are stories about Abe Lincoln or the Jackson 5. This is reality TV.
Meanwhile, we’ve got garbage like Who Wants to Marry My Father?, The Real World, Tool Academy, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians touting themselves as “reality TV”. How did we get here?
Well, we have to step back once more. Now it’s 2000. CBS has taken a gamble on a new type of TV show. Let’s take 16 people and dump them on a “deserted” island. But wait, no, let’s give them all their clothes and some food, maybe some water or something, you know, to make it survivable. They struck gold with one of the most depraved show concepts ever: Survivor. Now, at first it wasn’t so bad. These people did what they could to survive (though they were surrounded by a camera crew at all times), went to a confessional to tell American audiences what they were doing, and competed for a huge prize. This was all fine and dandy. Until they made another season. And then Big Brother. And then a million other shows like them. What’s worse is that not only is this not reality TV simply on the notion that these are in no way normal situations, but they were in many situations completely staged, rigged, or otherwise set-up such that the producers could alter the end result of the show.
And America bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. It’s depressing really. At least it’s good schadenfreude.
Here’s to another year of god-awful TV.
20
Jul
Okay, so I fixed the lock yesterday. Sort of. I mean, it’s not actually a lock, but at least it’s not a hole. Dave from upstairs is just a weird fucking guy, and I don’t want to deal with him any more than I already do. He… murmurs weird shit. Plus, I swear the guy gets up at 6:30 in the morning like fucking clockwork, it’s really eerie.
Man, I’m still pretty peeved at Neil. At least Erik listens when I talk about stuff, Neil is so quick to try pointing out flaws instead of being open to new ideas.
Uh… and I have to be honest, I think I’ve changed every clock in the apartment. That was a mistake. Shit.
18
Jul
So, I haven’t been posting lately mostly out of irritation. I’m still pissed about getting brought in for trying to get into our own apartment. I know Tempo wanted to hear about reality TV (the entertainment industry poopchute), and I’ll get to that in good time.
I just want my TV back to normal. F’n A. Well, whatever. We still have to fix our door. I mean, the doorknob works better than I thought before, I guess. But without a lock (right now it’s just a big fucking hole), anyone could get in here. And the last thing we need is some hobo in our apartment, stealing our shit.
Erik’s been sick as a dog on Ipecac. I warned him about the Drag Nasty. It’s his own damn fault. Now he’s just moping around, drinking all the MD. And he’s not gonna fix the damn door (neither will our slumlord landlord). Neil is once again MIA. Fucking hell, Lisa is ruining the good thing we had here, and it’s really getting on my nerves. Looks like I’m going to have to fix the damn door.
Mat out.
14
Jul
Just got out of lockup.
Yeah, really. What the fuck. Me, Neil, and Erik got arrested Sunday. For breaking into our own apartment. This asshole Officer Red comes up and grabs us just as we got into the house.
I’m fucking pissed. Our lock is busted apart, and the doorknob barely works, and I honestly couldn’t care less right now. God damn.
12
Jul
Hahahahaha, I saw an ad on the SHSN for some Batman DVD box set, and apparently his name in Spanish-speaking countries is Bruno Díaz. Wow.
All this TV is making me hungry, and Neil and Erik are nowhere to be found… I think I’m gonna order some take-out. Maybe this time my pizza’ll still be warm.
10
Jul
Argh. I found another one of my VHS tapes. Ghostbusters. Hell yeah. A real classic. Unfortunately, I forgot to rewind it after the last time I watched the ‘Busters take down Gozer. But our remote’s broken, which means the discovery was in vain.
We really need to figure this thing out. I don’t know how much longer I can stand to watch this Spanish Home Shopping Network programming. At least Rios Locos is sort of interesting. I swear, the guy who plays Rey Velmore looks really familiar… Someone around town or something, I don’t know. Whatever, I’m probably just imagining things.
Vaya con Dios, bebé.
9
Jul
So, a “Templark22″ was asking for my opinion on superheroes in a few capacities. Well, Tempo — that’s my new nickname for you. It’s all yours, enjoy — I’d be glad to elaborate.
First, to preface this whole thing, I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear. Batman is not a superhero. Hero? Absolutely. He did a lot of good (among some less heroic acts), but without superhuman abilities, he is no superhero. Spider-Man, however, is a superhero. He has abilities that go beyond human ability. Superman is a tricky one. I mean, he’s a douchebag, but here’s the thing. His abilities go beyond those of humanity, but not beyond those of his own race. Thus, Superman is simply an alien, stronger than man.
Anyway, I’ve diverted too much. Here’s the jive.
Today’s superheroes… well for starters, let me just say I’m glad we’re not in the 90’s anymore. Holy god, did you see Batman & Robin? I mean, Batman Forever was bad enough, but god damn, B&R was an abomination. Now, the more modern stuff I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with. Let’s start with Batman. Batman Begins pandered pretty well to the modern obsession with two things: gritty, brown realism (just look at modern “realistic” video games) and origin stories. We get an angle of Batman that doesn’t get seen much, plus we get some explanation as to why Batman’s costume has some of the things it does (his armguards were extremely well-justified). The Dark Knight, while being the definition of fan-service (Batman vs. The Joker, with the whole of the city on the line), was a very adult look at an otherwise cartoony character. I think it’s a breath of fresh air. I mean, Batman was built on camp (just ask Adam West), but at least in the 60’s they knew how camp worked. Joel Schumacher clearly thought 90’s camp should be his sexual fantasies on film. Anyway, I digress. The Batman movies focused on him as a person and as a hero dealing with morality and chaos, in a way that left you wondering what he would do next. I’m interested to see the third movie. Rumor has it, it’ll feature The Riddler and The Penguin.
Superman. Three words. Digitally. Reduced. Package. Look, Superman was great in the days when “The Man of Tomorrow” was a phrase that meant something. But guess what, this is tomorrow. In a high-tech world with rapidly-changing belief structures, we can’t have a hero that declares that everything he does is for “truth, justice, and the American way”. It’s time to phase out Superman and work with heroes a little more “now”.
Such as Watchmen. I read the comic, and saw the movie. The comic, I’m told, was actually designed to be a Golden Age comic criticizing the ideals of the Silver Age of comics. That simply being a masked vigilante wasn’t gonna cut it anymore, when real global problems could surface at any moment. I… don’t really understand why they went with an alien, but I suppose that was a reference to the future of comics, that the Golden Age would be characterized by larger-than-life foes. Which was good and all, for the time. These days, we’re more interested in the inner struggle. The tiny things that can make everything go wrong. Which is what made the movie even better than the comic. You got a much closer feel of each character. It could be simply seeing real people perform it rather than images on paper, but you couldn’t help but feel the reality of the situation. Eddie Blake’s line is chilling: “‘What happened to the American Dream?’ It came true! You’re looking at it…” while firing rockets into crowds of civilians.
I’d normally be a lot more critical of these movies, but honestly, there is no originality left in Hollywood. Everything’s been done, so they’re just doing it all again. Comic books, however, are a rare breed. Brilliant writing, complex and realistic characters, and moral conflicts that would make the pope have second thoughts are primed for Hollywood ravaging. I’m looking forward to the upcoming Marvel movies, and let’s hope Batman 3… I mean, 7. I mean, 8. I mean, 10. Let’s hope Batman 10 is as good as its (recent) predecessors.